If Cho had been rejected for purchasing a gun, I wonder what his next move would have been. It seems like his name should also be turned over to the police for investigation. Otherwise, he might buy a gun through another method?
Usually nothing happens. People with numerous felonies simply get denied, in which they'll simply shrug their shoulders and buy a gun off the street from another criminal.
I don’t like all this focus on “How did he get a gun?” The important question is “What is wrong with our society that he hadn’t been locked up in a mental hospital years earlier?” It’s clear from his writings that he spent a lot of time thinking about violence in general, with no particular focus on guns. If he’d been barred from purchasing a gun from a dealer, and hadn’t managed to buy one off the street, he’d have used something else. There’s no law against people who’ve been adjudicated as mentally ill going out and buying gasoline and chains. He apparently did buy or otherwise obtain chains. Imagine how many people he could have killed by chaining all the exit doors to a dorm in the middle of the night and throwing gasoline-fueled firebombs through some windows. It’s not that people like him need to be kept away from guns, it’s that they need to be kept away from free society.
One main result of this article is that the estates of the dead students will be able to sue the State of Virginia for gross negligence in not updating the database prohibiting gun sales to people with mental problems.
This will cost them $$$ and will be a slam dunk for anyone suing the state of Virginia.
He would have strapped a bomb to his body. Or some other means of horrific terror. Cho was help bent on murdering lots of people. Lack of a gun would not have changed that.
Car through the Mall at lunchtime?